Yes, if you cry out for discernment,
And lift up your voice for understanding,
If you seek her as silver,
And search for her as for hidden treasures;
Then you will understand the fear of the Lord,
And find the knowledge of God.

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Sunday, March 2, 2014

The Cornerstone

There is a theme in American politics about the First Amendment's "freedom of religion," though i find it interesting that the secular culture has tweaked it to mean "freedom from religion." However, freedom of speech is not freedom of speech and, therefore, Christians can not be quieted by the government, nor can any other belief or religious system.

Many think this country should be wholly secular, but that is impossible. The closest thing we could achieve, you might say, is an atheist culture, yet even atheism is a theist belief.
Theism is a belief in a deity (divine being). Divine meaning something with divinity. When we say there is no god, we are saying there are no morals. When we say we have morals, we are saying someone or something at some time reached some point of divination in which a standard behavior was realized. If we say this came from "evolution," then our would-be ancestors were divine. If we say this is ourselves in our own instincts (perhaps the most common), we say that self is divine. If we say it came from society, either as a whole or through some aristocratic group of intellects, we say that society is divine.But we can not say that it came from evolution, a theory in which barbaric creatures became barbaric man. We can not say it comes naturally, lest we require taught how to kill, steal, lie, and betray (on the contrary, we have to be taught how not to). We can not say it comes from a society or a group of "enlightened" individuals that scratch and claw their way to the top without remorse or thought of others.Sure, we have individuals that may clarify or even refine certain aspects of behavior, such as, speaking only of Eastern mystics, Mahatma Gandhi, Gautama Buddha, and some of the Dalai Lamas. And these so-called "wise men" are now deified. And they brought nothing that we didn't already know, they merely brought a new sense of accessibility to it. They were breaking no ground; they were, unknowingly, working with what had already been put in place; the preset Cornerstone.
If i widened the field beyond the mystics of far-east religions, it would be by vast majority Christians, most of whom were martyred. With that said, one person above all others refined our sense of coexistence, and that was Jesus Christ. And He brought no new law, either. He fulfilled it. He was and is the Cornerstone that all the other "greats" of morality didn't even realize they were basing their ideas on.

To try and bring this back to the introductory paragraph, Christianity is not political. There is no theocracy in it except that which is in the individual, in which case Christ governs everything in the individual (or at least He should), and then proceeds from said person.There is theocracy in other religions; Islam, Hinduism, even Buddhism and atheism offer theocracy, yet because there is no change of heart within that comes from these religions, this god-governance must come from without and work its way inwardly. But it can't heal the heart any more than, as the all-too-common phrase goes, "a Band-Aid can cure a cold."Any true change, any true "goodness" -as we can achieve goodness through Christ alone- must start within and work its way out and not vice-versa.

It is not a Christian idea to oppose moral deficiencies. It may be a Godly one, but it is not inherently Christian in nature. As said, mystics can understand things about God without understanding that it came from God.
Any man or woman can oppose, say, abortion. But it's only a God-fearing person that understands the baby's value from "before [He] formed [it]."
It doesn't take a follower of Christ nor even someone who believes in God to find it a vile, murderous ideal. But it does take a follower of Christ to know that we must "suffer the little children" so that they may come unto Him.It doesn't take a wise man to know that stealing is wrong and that charity is "good". But only a man who knows God can fully act upon that greatest commandment which is to love God, and the second which is to love our neighbor as ourselves.
It doesn't take Christ in the heart of a person to know what's right and what's wrong. It takes Christ in the heart of a person to fulfill what's right and what's wrong. And though many say they're looking for Christ, little do we realize that He is looking for us as well; He stands at the door and knocks, He is the Voice saying, "Come up here!" He is the One waiting for us to open our hearts to Him. We don't have to look, we just have to open the door and say, "Hello, I made a room for You, please, come on in, make Yourself a home."